[Editor’s note: This story includes an update at the end about the sentence given to the two defendants.]
Two climate activists who argued that the threat of climate change justified their efforts to block highways, banks and airports were convicted today in a Nanaimo court.
Provincial Court Judge Ronald Lamperson rejected the precedent-setting defence of necessity from Melanie Murray and Howard Breen, which was based on their claim that the urgency of the climate crisis required them to break the law.
“I’ve no doubt on the evidence that climate change constitutes an existential threat to life in Canada and everywhere else in the world,” Lamperson said. “This fact is established by widely accepted current science and has been recognized by the Supreme Court of Canada.”
But Lamperson ruled the peril of climate change is not sufficiently imminent and unavoidable to justify the activism under Canadian law.
Lamperson also ruled that Breen and Murray’s actions were “choices” as opposed to the “morally involuntary” illegal acts that can be forgiven under Canadian law.
He cited precedent from the BC Court of Appeal, which found in 2020 that acts of civil disobedience are unlikely ever to be excusable under Canadian law.
Breen and Murray will likely be sentenced in June.
While today’s ruling is a disappointment for Breen and Murray, lawyers representing other activists say the trial has already broken legal ground and advanced the defence of necessity.
Lamperson was the first Canadian judge to allow climate activists to present expert testimony in support of a necessity defence during the trial last August.
Breen and Murray’s lawyer, Vancouver-based attorney Joey Doyle, was able to introduce scientific evidence establishing the existential peril that climate change poses, as well as expert testimony on the role of civil disobedience in advancing justice in democratic societies.
University of British Columbia philosophy professor Kimberley Brownlee testified that civil disobedience strengthens, rather than undermines, the rule of law.
UPDATE: A provincial court judge in Nanaimo closed out the landmark trial of climate activists (reported on by The Tyee in the May 3 article above), rejecting the BC Crown’s insistence that jail time was needed to dissuade others from committing similar acts of civil disobedience.
Provincial Court Judge Ronald Lamperson convicted Melanie Murray and Howard Breen in May, rejecting their first-in-Canada “climate necessity” defence, arguing that the need to bring attention to the climate emergency justified disruptive lawbreaking.
During the sentencing hearing on Friday, Oct. 25, Crown argued that Breen’s multiple breaches, including blocking highways and a Vancouver Island bank, airport and port in 2021 and 2022, merited six months of incarceration.
Breen had only one prior conviction 35 years ago, and is 70 years old and in poor health, but Crown attorney Neal Bennet alluded to a more extensive criminal record by noting multiple arrests in recent years for which the Crown declined to press charges. That prompted Judge Lamperson to chide Bennet, as he did during the trial, for once again presenting immaterial information that could be prejudicial to the accused.
Lamperson sentenced Breen to nine months of house arrest less 12 days for time served in 2022 while awaiting a bail hearing, to be followed by 18 months probation. Murray, convicted on two charges of blocking highways during protests, received a suspended sentence and 12 months of probation.
In statements to the court, Murray and Breen expressed no remorse for their civil disobedience. As Murray told Judge Lamperson on Friday: “If there is any sadness or regret we feel today it is not because we acted but because we did not act boldly enough... to persuade you to join us in safeguarding the future of our children, grandchildren and the wider community.”
Read more: Rights + Justice, BC Politics, Environment
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